Principled ways of finding, analysing and planning for communicative overhead in interaction technology for fashion industry

Abstract

In this paper, we identify and analyse the problems associated with communicative overheads of a fashion design and manufacturing workflow. We conduct a multi-stage qualitative study to investigate where the rich multiple channels of communication afford and constrain the workflow during remote collaboration. From this study, we define what communication channels we have in our system. We then use the video data that we had collected through user testing, together with the feedback from the video-assisted stimulated recall interviews, to identify three kinds of communicative overheads in our system: novelty of technology, ongoing constraints and operational problems. We analyse each communicative overhead with examples from our video data, and conclude that there are various overheads, some that participants may overcome through learning and familiarity with the system, some that may not be easily overcome, and some that may not even be unique to a remote collaborative environment, as they also occur in a face-to-face collaborative environment. We believe that offering richer communication channels does not necessarily equate to greater efficiency in the collaborative process, and that designers and developers of collaborative systems need to investigate the effect of communicative overheads before introducing new channels to their system, as these overheads may decrease the efficiency of any collaborative experiences. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.